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Today, the success of organizations is not only based on their products and services but rather on their capability to (re)design their business processes in a flexible and dynamic way (Scheer et al. 2007).

In this chapter, we first reflect the origin and development of human thinking, acting, and natural language. Then, we introduce subject-oriented business process modeling by describing its main features and constructs intended to support organizational development steps. The focus of S-BPM modeling is on subjects as these are the active actors or systems in organizational development processes. Such a focus allows expressing knowledge in terms of natural language sentence semantics, as we do in natural language: a sentence consists of a subject, a predicate, and an object.

Subject-oriented business process management does not only include the opportunity to transfer information expressed in natural language with minimal effort into a model. It also allows a continuous change of business processes in a structured way. The S-BPM method itself is subject-oriented, with actors (subjects) at the focus. In the following, we explain the coordinated S-BPM activity bundles (predicates) that are executed by the respective actors. The object in S-BPM is the process itself. In this way, the S-BPM process model can be fully specified by its inherent elements and logic of description. This self-referentiality reflects the consistency of the approach.

Process analysis is a central bundle of activities of the S-BPM process model. Once an S-BPM project is started, analysis is paramount. It denotes a purposeful collection and evaluation of relevant process information in preparation for the next steps of the process model. Such process information includes existing descriptions of business processes, current process specifications (e.g., ARIS diagrams), measurements, and analyses of key performance indicators, or other documentation for quality assurance.

As the distinction between design time and runtime of models is essential to the understanding of modeling, we first distinguish between models and instances. Then, we explain what role S-BPM stakeholders play in the course of modeling. Subsequently, the individual modeling constructs are described. We distinguish here between basic and extension constructs.

In the previous chapter, we have discussed modeling in detail. For this purpose, a variety of constructs are available. When putting them to practice, modelers can proceed along two fundamentally different ways: modeling by construction and modeling by restriction.

Once a process has been modeled (see Chap. 5), it is advisable to validate and optimize the process and its model, before the model is implemented in the organization and IT. In this chapter, we discuss the validation.

In Chap. 7, we have described validation, which ensures the effectiveness of business processes. Its goal is to make sure that a process delivers the results as described by analysis. When optimizing, the efficiency of processes is at the focus of interest, in order to achieve the desired results with the least possible expenditure of time and resources. Efficiency targets are set in the course of analysis in the form of reference values of performance parameters derived from a corporate strategy.

In the previous chapters, we have described how business processes of an organization are mapped to a process model by the subject-oriented method. The result is then validated and optimized as required. The process is now specified to the extent that it can be used in the organization. This step is referred to in terms of the S-BPM process model as an organization-specific implementation. With this, abstract subjects become real-life employees, the subjects are embedded into the organization.

IT has achieved a high level of penetration in many organizations. Without IT support, many business processes cannot be handled in an economically beneficial way. For this reason, the careful and on-demand mapping of processes to information and communication technology is an important task. This applies for cases where employees are involved, as well as for operations in which a high degree of automation is striven for. A suitable and well-fitting software environment plays a significant role here. However, the challenge in many cases is an existing heterogeneous landscape of systems and services, in which each of the components fulfills specific tasks, and for which all of these components need to be integrated into an overall solution for adequate process support.